


colors of love

by m3owww



Series: maribat [23]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Maribat - Fandom, Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst and Fluff, F/M, Maribat Secret Santa, Somehow, This one has a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:41:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28291059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m3owww/pseuds/m3owww
Summary: Everyone had an aura.Marinette’s aura was a bright pink. Most of the time, anyway. It darkened or lightened depending on her mood, and when she became Ladybug, the hue changed altogether to a deep, deep red.Everyone’s aura was different. You made friends based on their auras and how they felt to you, chose whether or not to strike a conversation with the woman on the park bench based on her ocean blue aura, whether or not to risk your own life to save the old man about to be hit by a car based on his protective jade green aura.The thing is, everyone also had a soulmate.When you met them, their aura would supposedly reach out to you. You would be able to feel that the two of you would click together perfectly. Their aura would make you feel happiness and comfort and everything that makes you feel better, and yours would do the same for them.
Relationships: Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug/Damian Wayne
Series: maribat [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1842979
Comments: 30
Kudos: 423
Collections: miraculous ladybug stories





	colors of love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rebecarojas07](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rebecarojas07/gifts).



> for @rebecarojas07 on tumblr! Happy Holidays, Beca!
> 
> Daminette is not one of my strengths, and it took a little while to figure out how to capture a dynamic that worked for them, but I hope I did them justice.

Everyone had an aura. 

Marinette’s aura was a bright pink. Most of the time, anyway. It darkened or lightened depending on her mood, and when she became Ladybug, the hue changed altogether to a deep, deep red.

Everyone’s aura was different. You made friends based on their auras and how they felt to you, chose whether or not to strike a conversation with the woman on the park bench based on her ocean blue aura, whether or not to risk your own life to save the old man about to be hit by a car based on his protective jade green aura.

The thing is, everyone also had a soulmate.

When you met them, their aura would supposedly reach out to you. You would be able to feel that the two of you would click together perfectly. Their aura would make you feel happiness and comfort and everything that makes you feel better, and yours would do the same for them. 

Alya’s squash orange aura had found Nino’s pine colored one on the first day of school. She’d entered the room, and both felt a tug from the other’s aura. Then they looked up, eyes meeting, and that was that.

Rose and Juleka found each other much, much earlier than that. They were in  _ école maternelle _ , and Juleka’s timid violet aura, streaked with black, had reached out and connected with Rose’s bubblegum pink one.

Years passed, and as more kids joined her class, more people found their other halves.

Ivan and Myléne. Kim and Max. Even Chloe found the one destined to be with her, a Japanese girl named Kagami who was quite intimidating, but very sweet, in a blunt sort of way, once you got to know her. 

But Marinette? She still had not found her soulmate.

And she was starting to think, just a little bit, that she was part of the 12.4% of the population that never would.

.o0o.

Damian grew up in the League of Assassins.

His aura was green, like his mother’s and grandfather’s, but while theirs were the acid green of the Lazarus Pit and almost had minds of their own, Damian’s was a beautiful, rich emerald.

Sometimes, when Mother got close, he could hear her aura whispering, hissing, demanding bloodshed, murder, death. It scared him, though he would never admit it to anyone.

In the League, fear is a weakness. Those who fear are efficiently eliminated.

He assumed that Grandfather’s aura was the same. He had never been close enough to tell.

Soulmates were... a delicate topic in the League.

When an assassin found their soulmate, they were required to either convert them to the League’s cause or kill them. Grandfather had established the order after he lost too many assassins to their soulmates, deciding to leave the cause for good.

Damian, despite never knowing his soulmate, despite having already killed countless full-grown men, didn’t want to kill them.

But he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to convince them to join the League, either. Damian may have been the heir to the Demon’s Head, but even at the young age of six and a half years, he wasn’t blind.

And he saw, with green eyes the same shade as the color that surrounded him, that every single aura inhabiting the League’s base, regardless of saturation or hue or intensity, screamed for blood.

.o0o.

Another thing about soulmates - even if you never met them, you felt it when they died, and your aura changed, shifted, into something else. When it senses that its other half is gone, an aura will fade in color, as if mourning or grieving.

When Marinette was twelve years old, her aura had pulsed suddenly and violently exactly once, the echoes of a boy’s surprised, cut-off gasp ringing in her ears, before its color faded, not entirely, but the once bright pink was now more of a washed-out version of dusty rose.

She doesn’t remember much of anything else that happened that day, only that her first coherent thought afterwards was that she really was part of the 12.4% who’d never get to meet their soulmate after all.

The most interesting thing were the little streaks of emerald that now danced and curled around her body, clinging to her as if she was the only thing keeping them on this planet. On this world.

After all, that’s exactly what she was doing, because those were the only bits left of her soulmate’s aura, the rest of which had dissipated with his death.

So she treasured his emerald green, the color held close to her heart, and continued on with her life. Her life force was keeping two auras alive instead of just one now.

She hated that the green disappeared when she became Ladybug, but at the same time, she knew her aura would be too distinct, too recognizable, counterproductive to wearing a mask and keeping a secret identity.

And then there was the matter of one Chat Noir.

It wasn’t that she hated him, really. He was a wonderful person, and though she would probably never admit it, his jokes were actually quite funny. Sometimes. Chat was a great friend - she just knew, deep down, that he wasn’t the one she was looking for, that while she was proud to call him a friend, to her, he’d never be more than that, despite what he thought.

Maybe she could have convinced herself that his green aura was the right shade of emerald, that he was the one, if it weren’t for the streaks of her dead soulmate’s aura that swirled around her.

But the person that fate had declared her perfect match was dead, and Chat Noir obviously wasn’t, so that settled that.

.o0o.

A year after his death, Damian came back to life.

People aren’t supposed to do that. Once you die, you’re supposed to stay dead. Your heart should continue to be lifeless, your brain should still show no signs of activity. Once brain activity ceases, by all scientific means, you are gone past a point beyond saving.

But Father revived him with a Chaos shard, defying all laws of nature, and his aura glowed emerald green once again as he took in his first breath since he died at the hands of his own adult clone.

However, there was something different. He felt like there was a part of the aura missing, like it was clinging to something,  _ someone _ , else.

He could sort of feel the aura that his missing part is stubbornly attached to, if he concentrated. It was warm and bright, and if he really focused, he could almost smell hints of sweet pastries. A bakery, then.

Jon knew there was something different, but Damian convinced him that it was just because he died. After all, being murdered by your own clone before coming back to life a year later is undoubtedly a traumatic experience.

If Jon heard that Damian was lying with his super senses, he definitely did not show it.

.o0o.

A year after her aura faded, the color came back all at once, filling once again with a bright, vivid pink and sending her reeling with so many emotions.

How can someone be alive after they very obviously passed away?

She knew that he actually died, because you only got what was left of your soulmate’s aura after their heart stops beating.

He could have been resuscitated if the time period was much shorter, but a  _ year _ ? That was unthinkable, impossible, unless heavy magic was involved.

Don’t get her wrong, she was overjoyed that she might finally have a chance to meet him, but the circumstances surrounding his death and subsequent resurrection are… concerning, to say the least.

As the newly appointed Guardian of the Miraculouses, the kwamis have told her many tales of the Lazarus Pits and what they’re capable of. How they can heal lethal wounds and even bring the dead back to life.

How they drive the ones who are dipped in the green waters of the Pits insane.

.o0o.

Robin met Ladybug when she and her partner made a formal request, not for Justice League intervention, but for a detective, to lurk behind the scenes, out of sight, and find any information that could end the war with the butterfly and peacock faster while Ladybug and Chat Noir deal with the akumas. After all, it was a bit difficult to be stealthy and gather information on the enemy when there was a colorful monster with ridiculous powers screaming for your jewelry.

Ladybug’s aura was a bold, bold red.

Robin’s was emerald green, but the Bats used blocking technology so they couldn’t be recognized on the streets. All anyone else saw were the hints of an aura of an indiscernible color.

However, the devices had one flaw, despite many of the world’s brightest minds trying to fix it.

Soulmates could see each other’s auras in their full, brilliant color. Selina Kyle, for example, could see Father’s blue, so dark that it could be mistaken for black at first glance, no matter what he was wearing, whether it was a three-piece suit, an armored bat costume, or, though he didn’t like thinking about it, absolutely nothing at all.

Robin grew up in the League of Assassins. He may not be as proficient as Black Bat, but he has still been trained in reading body language, and judging by the way Ladybug’s eyes widen, Robin either had a pumpkin on his head, or she could see the emerald green that swirls around him.

He was certain he did not have a pumpkin on his head, so it was the second option.

Her aura was weird, however. There was faint tugging, but it was not right. The red didn’t feel correct, like it was the other half of his soul. It was more like a distant friend or acquaintance, one you would greet politely in passing, but not interact much more than that.

Magic. He stifled a growl of exasperation. Damian hated magic.

.o0o.

Marinette met her soulmate as Ladybug.

The emerald green that swirled around Robin was the same color as the streaks in her pink when she was Marinette, but all he saw was the fake red, created by the same magic that put her in skintight spandex.

Magic was useful, sure, but it was keeping her from him. She finally found him, and she couldn’t even acknowledge it, because she was a hero right now, and she had a job to do, a reputation to uphold.

So she smoothed her face back into that neutral hero mask, pretending she saw nothing at all, and made a mental note to track him down as Marinette later.

She lost him once already. There was no way that she was going to let him slip through her fingertips again.

.o0o.

As it turns out, she didn’t need to go searching for Robin, because he came to her.

When Marinette walked into class the next day, there was a dark haired boy with an irritated scowl and a vivid green aura standing at the front of the room. He smacked away Mlle. Bustier’s hand when she tried to put it on his shoulder, and turned his head away from the teacher, looking towards the doorway where Marinette was standing instead.

And then their eyes met. 

Her bright pink reached out, out, out, towards his rich green, until they twisted and swirled and danced around each other, filling her with warmth and joy and an assurance that he’d never let her come to harm, that as long as he was there, he’d protect her. That as long as he was there, she’d be safe.

“Damian Wayne,” He said, when Mlle. Bustier asked him to introduce himself, and Marinette thought it was the most elegant name she had ever heard, suiting him perfectly.

Conveniently, Alya had called in sick that day, and the only empty seat in the classroom was next to her, which Damian easily slid into, his green pulsing in time with her heartbeat.

“I’m Damian,” He introduced himself again, the tiniest of smiles pulling his lips upwards just a little. “But you already knew that, I believe.”

She returned the smile, a bright one that could light up the room (and according to Damian, it did). “I’m Marinette. Marinette Dupain-Cheng.”

Once, Marinette had worried that she’d never meet her other half. Then, she had been certain that she never would. But Damian Wayne defied all odds and returned, coming back to this world so they could be here right now, sitting side by side, each of their auras perfectly matching the other’s, making them feel safe and warm and so, so loved.

**Author's Note:**

> the whole aura thing was lightly based off my own experiences with chromesthesia, but really, really lightly.
> 
> come find me on [tumblr!](m3owww.tumblr.com)


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